How Putin Helped a Billionaire Assemble an ‘Impossible’ Art Exhibition
Bernard Arnault’s Paris museum, Fondation Louis Vuitton, is showing a once-in-a-lifetime collection of artworks, all on loan from museums in Russia.
Paul Cézanne’s Still Life with a Curtain from 1892-1894.
Source: © Adagp, Paris 2021
In 2016, Bernard Arnault, the billionaire chairman of LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton SE, traveled with his adviser Jean-Paul Claverie to Moscow to personally thank Russian President Vladimir Putin for loaning art to Arnault’s Paris museum, the Fondation Louis Vuitton.
“Because it’s a gift to France,” says Claverie, speaking in his book-strewn office at LVMH’s Paris offices. “Not just to France, to Europe and our world.”